When I was Born

When I was born, I was taught that eventually I would die and in this death I would also experience a birth, a kind of confusing yet equally disturbing birth into the hands of the creator who had paradoxically given me life just so that he could have the pleasure of controlling it and in the end taking it. How wonderful these notions seem to be, but now they seem too wonderful, too surreal and too absurd. The only satisfaction I have got out of all this is the unsatisfactory satisfaction of questioning and of being puzzled. Self righteous Shepards have cursed me in hushed tones so that their daring decibels go unheard, drowned by their obsession with beads and chants. “God is way past your comprehension” “Man can never understand God” they say, and for me this is just plain old escapism.  

When I was born what I and the rest of the others who celebrated my first coming did not know was that in the very room there took place another birth, the birth of my the other. As I screamed and twisted, kicking back my legs, squinting-not wanting another drop of light to disrupt my past year of bliss I failed to notice on the wall, clothed with not light there lay peacefully cradled in the arms of a much bigger figure my very own demon. The demon or the other as I like to call it, (as it was relative to my own existence) stayed there on the scaling walls, mimicking my every movement, bathing in our combined experience of all things that surrounded me and hence it. They named me Uh so I named my the other Oh and as I grew my demon shadow grew too, it was surreal but it was never lonely. During night time we used to have quite conversations but his tone was filled a deep sense of urgency and mine had in it a calm composed passiveness. His oblivion seemed inevitable at dawn; my long lasting existence seemed invincible. But at the age of twelve when a friend of mine visited the temple he decided to stay there, I decided to return and didn’t here from him (my friend X) for 21 years and 33 days, which gave me quite some time, too much time now I realize to spend with Oh. My skin grew darker and his stayed the same, I now saw a fairy land on those scaling walls, tasted the plaster and felt ecstasy and began to paint my self on those lively walls in which Oh resided with un-holy tones of red that flowed from my body. At the end of the wait Oh whispered “It is time” and now I could feel my demon Oh and myself Uh unite. It was an inevitable moment I knew-UhOh and then darkness was what was all around. Uh and Oh were one, yes we were one and in that state of madness I could sense the nothingness into which I was dragged grow around us. It was time to hush! Uhoh!

When I was born I never expected that I would have to go through such a physiological purgatory-this state of limbo. From such a sleep I hoped to rise but now such hope failed to reassure me. It was then that another residing phantom of my thoughts (they were my only friends now, being in a coma and all) said to me “You should hope that your friend wakes you up.” “Why would he?” “He’s a good man. A bit mad but what the hell anyone can tolerate a little eccentricity as long as he’s a good fellow” And as I lay along with Oh in a state of nothingness in which there was nothing of anything and this was the everything and the sole thing and at the same time the nothing, I began to hope for my messiah. He would come for the second time in my life, maybe a bit drunk, maybe a bit tipsy but would see the hieroglyphs on the wall, immediately understand the implications, race into the void that I made and wake me up. I would see him coming, clothed in contrast to all that surrounds me and take me back up or down or wherever is it that I had come from. This would be the perfect end or the perfect beginning.

When I was born nobody told me that I would be born again into this pompous world. But when this event actually took place, after hours or days I am not sure in which I hoped and prayed that I be taken back into the world and given a second chance, I found the whole process of coming back rather tiring. The bright skies were still there, so was my scaly wall, the birds were also there, just the same as the plaster that gathered below my four walls. Everything was the same, but the people had changed. There were no more demons. All the Oh’s had disappeared and the Uh’s, they were in a frenzy, my people were panicky without their the others.  Why? I asked myself till I understood that there was no real answer. They were panicky because they were not composed. But all this drama seemed too familiar and then it struck me. I had spread the disease of hope. Yes, hope was a disease when hope was left loose it fornicated with faith just the way it had in my state of oblivion. These people around me now believed that they were going through everything that I went through. I had carried their destruction on my back and had saved them but they still felt lost and began to hope that some one would redeem them. The world with it colours seemed grim to these souls, everything began to crumble. “Save us! We are righteous” was all I could hear them say. It was too disturbing, that question and so I decided to remain silent. And as a few more years went by I saw grey headed clowns doing cheap magic tricks but this time in a comically pious manner. They began persuading people to look up at the sky, promising them that there was a better world up there and the sheep looked up but I the lamb continued to keep by glance at the ground beneath my feet. These people began to spread rumours of what was to come and these tales were narrated at public gatherings in which all of them kept staring at the skies in devotion (event though half of them had turned blind)

When I was born I was told that God had a plan and nothing goes against this plan. But what I found out was that the blind considered all possibilities and all conclusions as part of that fool-proof plan, instead of admitting that the future was something that they really had no idea about.

You are now…

You have been trying to sleep for quite sometime now. Your eyes, they have turned bloodshot letting you know how they crave rest. Your mind is tired and still slumber shies away, maintaining an unholy distance. Adding to the intrinsic turmoil your neighbour’s cat is determined to get right one of Bach’s freakishly high notes, devoting and spending endless hours of your sleep. Yes not hard work nor patience but the feline instinct makes it smart enough to make it spend your precious pennies. How loathsome. A thing or two you should learn from the fur ball.

After a long wait you decide to get out of bed. ‘Finally’, ‘At last’ are a few adverbs that whoosh past the labyrinths of your crooked mind. But realization now comes as a shock, right when you utter the final syllables you realize that no matter how many times you perform that redeeming action of getting up you will always find yourself succumbing to the desires of your master laziness, for you are asleep and your actions count for nothing. It feels good to hide yourself beneath layers of warm blankets.

The time has come for you to try again. Just like the spider that has been re-making its web in children’s books for a long time. How long was it? 200 years I think but you are free to assume anything, for not a line of truth, have you encountered so far. Getting up sure seems challenging don’t you think? And your desire to get lost in time is not helping. Get up, now.

You are not alone. You are in the presence of a ghost. Some one three hundred years older than you is staring you right in the face and you lie there like a corpse, respect less. She looks a lot like many women from creepy old pictures that you used to find at your grand parents villa. You remember one person now. The eyes your memory digs out and put in front of your eyes are hazel in colour, but the one that you now stare back at is just a light shade of grey. Your memory is in contradiction for you quite well remember those peculiar set of eye balls. These look lifeless, like the ones at Madame Tussauds, not just lifeless but also they seem to you as resonating lie. You are troubled for her rosy cheeks are missing too. Where have they gone? Where have they gone? Do you know? No you don’t. So if you do let me know too. You don’t know.

That photograph, it deceived you.

A liar.

All that time has left behind as a shameless residue is an array of light and dark black.

You are unable to take it all in and so you raise your arm bringing it into your field of vision. You start an unending fit of comparison, the blood and colour filled flesh versus the pale miserable fragment of memory and imagination.

The comparison continues.

Life and death.

The real and the un-real.

The ghost smiles.

You stare back with dilated pupils.

Her lips stir in motion. You can see that. Her facial muscles they too are now in action. You fail to see that. Twitching and expanding and contracting they paint a silent picture, a picture of contrast. No sounds uttered still nothing bothers you because you feel an urge to pay close attention.

Yes, you pay attention, but not to her speech. You are still occupied with the HD image of yourself and the soulless image of you friend.

She is gone, never to return.

You are still in bed. It is dark and hence you are aware that a lamp is burning behind your head. The warm covers have lost its warmth. Something is dripping from your feet. The culprit that has caused the loss of warmth has finally been found. Why is water dripping from your feet? You are eager to find out. You wiggle your way out of the damp covers. Is it blood? You feel panicky but that sensation settles soon. It is neither blood nor water, it is paint. The lamp has been of good use.

Now if you were to compare like you did earlier you would be confused. Your legs are dripping away the difference. A pool of difference forms beneath your humble abode, your bed.

Without colour your legs are lifeless. The feet that took you places far and wide are now a liability for you. How sad.

You might want to chop them off!

No you shouldn’t.

They might never wake up, then what?

Let them rest.

Rebecca now enters the room. What is a Rebecca? For some odd reason you felt like saying it and so you have. You realize this too and so you begin customizing her.

She now has a rather tanned look. It is because you remember her to be pale.

You are now tempted.

She moves closer and you notice an all too vague yet familiar look of innocence even in her most ridiculous look.

She stares at the pool of colour beneath you bed.

This time you hear a voice. You are quick to recognize the voice as hers. Why? She does not speak! She does not even to try to paint a silent picture, then why? You want to hear her, that’s why.

What is she saying?

Promises.

Are you sure?

Regrets.

Yes you are sure.

Words resonate and ricochet.

You are caught right in eye with a Darling. It has gone right through you like a bullet. You feel no pain. But it pains to know that you are not worthy of pain.

You are now awake.

You are now awake. You awaken once more and once again you wake. Then again and again and again till you fall asleep.

*****

The City of Lights

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Fragments

Seated in the dim glow of the lone bulb, that had exhausted itself after years of service, his life seemed splendid. In darkness light reveals itself and in fear courage. A blunt courage that had made him act earlier eased its grip; he felt a familiar sense of belonging rise up from within. In an instant the bulb went off, leaving behind darkness to wrap around him.

Twelve years ago in darkness had he lost his only friend, years seemed to fly by. It was a rainy night, thunder and lightning continued their routine disputes. Thunder lost its rage and ripped opened the sky with sound, as lightning cautiously retorted with insults of silence. Fred who happened to be the oldest was not home yet, on his way home he realized he wouldn’t get back to that familiar plot of land. He was dead, a victim of a fight he had nothing to do with. A fight no man could control, with flashes of white and bursts of sound the fight continued. They knew of the incident the next day. Robert had lost his only friend, someone he would never hesitate to talk to. This was in a way the beginning of silence as well as fear in his life. For the next twelve years he stayed out of two things, conversations and darkness.

But this time something had changed, fear ceased its control over him. He felt perfectly safe in the warmth of the night. Time passed, the night grew old and withered away making way to a new dawn. As the sun rose sprinkling drops of light onto everything around it, those eye lids that had rested now opened to see the pleasant light of day. Blurred entities began to take shape slowly. He recognized his room but failed to remember anything else, fragments from his past lingered in his mind. He moved around like a ghost, searched for his wallet, nothing was found. His thoughts he spoke aloud in monologue, hoping for something to come out of it. He was truly a ghost, a kind of ghost that was alive but could be killed.

He felt freedom for the first time in his life. The reset button had been hit; he had the chance to turn the wrongs of his life to right. He was one of those lucky men who won not lotteries but a life itself.

In haste had he gone out to discover a forgotten world, but he failed to discover anything new. As each second passed and as his eyes moved from object to object from person to person somewhere in his mind those images struck a note. His freedom or the strangeness and distance he felt from all that surrounded him seemed to disappear. The world of his past came back to him. The street vendors, the busy college goers, the old, the young, faces and voices began to rush through his mind in frenzy.

“Robert…aye Robert..why no Times?” a voice called out.

Realizing that it was his name, he turned back to find the source of that deep odd voice. It was a man holding up a news paper. Forcing a smile on his face he moved towards him.

“So what made you think you could miss out on a day’s action?” the man said “not once have you forgotten to buy the Times”

Robert still sporting a smile moved close and said “Has the world changed so much. I thought it could wait”

“Ahh….that’s clever..but you ought to be informed, don’t you?”

“Fine let me have it”

The news paper seemed to be same, as he skimmed through the pages while waiting for a cup of coffee. Homicides, suicide, scandals, and occasionally award announcements were reported along side pages that contained the list of all those fortunate people who never had the burden of waking from their fruitless slumber. The restaurant was a dust covered building; the grey walls had literally turned black due to the dust. The coffee came shortly, so did the bill.

Once back on the streets he tried even harder to figure out the ambiguities of his life. How did he lose his life’s memory, the most dreaded yet valued possession he had. That was a question that made his brain overheat and produce a migraine.

Seated at a bus stop was an old gentleman who had the air of a government servant, taking quick glances at his watch every two seconds.

“Do you know the way to the medical shop?” Robert asked as gently as possible

 

The old man drew a quick glance, motioned his head in the forward direction and let out a short undistinguishable murmur.

Getting the hint Robert began in the direction towards the shop, with an irritated mind and an aching head. A few meters and strange faces later he reached a brand new shop with neon lights and huge banners that read “Alpha Medicals” in three different languages.

The drug was handed out quick, in an instant it vanished and the so called relief process began.

Stepping out again into the dust and heat he once again began the lesson of familiarizing taught to him by nature. Almost all of his past had returned to him but one, his job. But that was not to be for very long.

“Hey…where have you been…a lot of people are worried!” said a fair young man who unlike every one else was dressed in a three piece suit on an extremely hot day. 

“Hey” he let out a single syllable not knowing what to say.

“So how come you decide to take a walk when the company has decided to throw you a party?” he asked with a hint of dissatisfaction.

“I was sick.”

“That’s sad. After years of reporting you get a promotion to stay indoors and voila you’re sick” an air of arrogance was now rising.

Minutes past, a few more ‘voilas’ too and some more arrogance came along with some chit chat about this and that of the office. Once all that was out, he moved past Robert with haste and a friendly nod.

He was apparently a journalist, he was the one who defined the views of people on a lot of matters and issues, and however he was the only one that wrote about all ages not knowing his own life in totality, still trying to piece together fragments of his past. These fragments however over time guaranteed him that if time was allowed they would fix themselves. Such knowing brought him relief.

*************************

The next morning, fixing his tie, he prepared himself to come face to face with all those less fortunate souls that had woken this morning, rehearsing each line he would speak to them, each nod, each gesture, ensuring not a millisecond robbed him of that air of familiarity he intended to display.

He had been reset, how he didn’t know, that was the incident that had gotten him over his fear of conversations and darkness. Now in front of mirror stood a new man, Robert last name unknown, journalist, unafraid of darkness and conversations. How these changes were brought out in him, he failed to see. The passing of each second made him less and less concerned. In an hours time he would continue in his share of misfortune, his life.

The clock struck nine, a man in a purple tie, hands free, walked out of that apartment with a new found attitude. His face glowed as a result of some unknown victory.

Reaching the corner of that busy street, Robert stopped, let of a sigh and moved towards the newspaper vendor and said “The Times..I ought to stay informed!”

“Yes…it costs dearly to live in the past” sounded the deep odd voice of a man.

With a smile he parted, with not many memories to his possession but with hope that he could make some more, for the plainness of his existence alarmed and frightened him.

He followed his path, as he was guided by the address on the newspaper. And there it was a three storied building with a board as big as a truck which read

“THE TIMES

            Where the past recreates and the present unfolds”

Reaching the third floor, after being greeted with strange yet familiar faces, his typical day began or so he assumed. It had taken him years to earn a chair and table, however today his freshness never ceased. For on that eventless day, a day which was same as day that had passed for many, he felt new and ready to recreate his past. For it was the first time in history that a man could change not his future but his own past.

The day progressed just the way he thought it would, eventless.

In a day there lies so much to be conquered, so much to be lost and so much to be forgotten as well as remembered. The arms of the clock moved at different speeds for different people, for some it lagged and yet for some it rushed. For a man with a new found identity the arms rushed, they moved so swiftly that Robert cared for nothing but to savor every passing second even as he considered his life as something less fortunate. He envied the dead, the ones that had found peace in an everlasting undisturbed slumber.

Packing his bag, he moved towards the exit, completing the first day of work after his re- birth. The elevator helped him descend, in a couple of moments he found himself standing at an cold empty corner of a nameless street, still not knowing why he stood motionless.

He felt peace.

He stood undisturbed, until a dark silhouette of a woman appeared a few meters away from him.

Time stopped.

Moving towards the last piece of the puzzle, he knew not what to expect. Her dark brown eyes made him move swiftly.

Out of nothingness suddenly appeared a mob of unfortunate souls, busy and in a hurry to get where they were supposed to go. The crowd swallowed them both; Robert couldn’t distinguish one from another. Moving with the crowd he was lost. In a city of millions this was common, if only he could remember that.

Turning a corner, crossing the road, he went into uncharted territory. A little neighborhood which seemed to exist a few decades back, still unchanged with an atmosphere that felt stagnant and unchangeable by its greatest enemy, time.

Dark clouds gathered, cutting off the sun from its usual habit of savoring its last moments before it had to set. Flashes of lightning and eruption of thunder made its presence known. Rain hesitated to wash away the weariness that lay after a hard days work. Thunder and lightning grew louder and brighter. A few windows closed, and the sound of silence was heard except at moments of dispute. With each flash of lightning a scene recreated itself, breaking almost all laws of time and space that made clocks frown, a scene of tragic consequences unfolded.

A young man of twenty, moved forward, running out of breath, in sheer desperation, a young man that had familiarity written all over his face, a face that revealed itself in flashes. He resembled a good deal of Robert’s past, moving forward in panic, reaching no where but his end.

Robert moved to help him yet distance grew between them, time had revealed a lot but time had no second thoughts in stopping him from changing it. The young man motioned forward yet reached no where.

Robert halted, looked up to the sky as the rain had begun pouring down; the young man however faced downwards lying on the ground motionless. He kept his gaze steady at the heavens, the moment in history that had shaped his life had just unfolded before him, he was finally at peace with darkness and conversations, and this was the last piece of the puzzle that had reset his life.

Now at peace with his past, the fragments that had hidden themselves from him began to resurface. In a strange land witnessing the strangest encounter of his life he was no longer lost. He knew perfectly well how to get back.

*************************************